And with three quick moves they are in checkmate. Dupin masterfully explains the details of what happened, how the intruder climbed up to the fourth story windows and becoming frenzied killed both of the L’Espanaye women, throwing one out of the window and stuffing the other up the chimney. Dupin does not concern himself with motive but rather looks at the details and makes an educated inference. Using all the evidence and the oversights of the police he is able to resolve the case with ease.
He proves that the police’s basic surface plan of attack didn’t work, and that “there is no method to their proceedings, beyond the method of the moment. ” He proves that they are not worthy components. And in the last paragraph we see the final defeat, the checkmate and match. Dupin has saved Le Bon (which ironically means the good), the man charged with the murders, and has defeated the police in their own game even though they tried to castle.
1 The police unconsciously tried to protect the Ourang-Outang by blaming Le Bon, but the truth (Dupin) prevailed, or in other words, the superior acumen prevailed even over a vigilant concentration. “The functionary, however well disposed to my friend, could not altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge in a sarcasm about the propriety of every person minding his own business. ” Let him talk,” said Dupin, “… let him discourse; it will ease his conscience. I am satisfied at having defeated him in his own castle.
” It seems these two sides have played before and that Dupin always prevails even when the other side always tries to castle to protect their ideas and pride. Poe revels in the extraordinary, and his attention to every minute detail is what makes his stories a game, a wild puzzle to solve. His characters thrive on enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics; exhibiting in their solutions each degree of acumen “which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural. ” “His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.
” And this is the whole game of life, to live and to write the future and to figure out mysteries that baffle us. This is Dupin’s clever technique to solving mysteries and the conundrum of this story, and is one maybe we should employ once we grasp it:’De nier ce qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas’: to deny what is, and to explain what is not. 1Castling is a move in chess where a player will protect his king from checkmate by moving his castle over and next to the king forcing the king out of his middle position and over to either side of the board.
